THE NOTE: Running on Iran

October 23, 2007 — -- This is why Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., left the Republican National Committee (and welcome, Mike Duncan, to the world of Howard Dean).

This is the answer former senator Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., should have given a month ago (and again, late is better than never with this candidate).

This isn't what Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was looking forward to when he announced his new outreach to religious voters (and the countdown is on to the announcement of a "scheduling conflict").

This is why the Democrats who would be president love Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. (and also why they sort of hate him too).

And this is why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's, D-N.Y., biggest foreign-policy concern is no longer Iraq. It is Iran.

Just when Clinton looked like she'd answered the critics -- just about -- on her past support for the Iraq war, last month's Iran vote emerged and appeared to blindside the ever-vigilant Clinton camp.

Now comes Obama with a mailer to Iowans, countering Clinton's latest attempt at defense. Obama links his opposition to the Iraq war to his opposition to the saber-rattling with Iran. "Barack Obama is the ONLY major candidate for president to oppose both the Iraq War from the very start and the Senate amendment that raises the risk of war with Iran," the jumbo (and colorful) postcard reads.

"While other Democrats voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, Barack Obama opposed another Bush foreign policy fiasco," it continues (omitting the fact that Obama missed the Senate vote). It quotes Obama as saying that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "could use this language to justify an attack on Iran as a part of the ongoing war in Iraq."

Obama may have finally found his opening to tie his 2002 anti-war position (the one everyone in the Democratic field wishes they had) to something tangible, forward-looking, and slightly scary to Democratic voters.

Former senator John Edwards, D-N.C., Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., share Obama's message on the Iran resolution -- making it dicier for the Clinton camp to wish away, and cutting deeply at one of her biggest weaknesses as a candidate. Biden yesterday: "The big deal here is I am afraid that some of my Democratic colleagues in voting for this resolution gave this [president] an excuse to do the last thing we should be doing now -- attacking Iran."

Obama's got the biggest megaphone, and he's turning up the volume. "The times are too serious and the stakes are too high to just be driven by ambition," he said yesterday in filing for the New Hampshire primary, per ABC's Sunlen Miller.

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And Iraq is set to reemerge as a campaign issue, even amid the (relative) quiet out of Baghdad. President Bush yesterday "challenged Congress to another clash over the direction of the Iraq war" with another $46 billion funding request, "and insisted that they approve it by the end of the year," Peter Baker writes for The Washington Post. "The debate may play out just as the presidential nominating campaigns reach their climax. Although Bush wants the spending approved within two months, Democrats said the military does not need the money until early February, and they do not anticipate acting until early next year."

Harry Reid's response, which was probably more welcomed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., than by Clinton or Obama: "President Bush should not expect congress to rubber-stamp this latest supplemental request. We won't do that. . . .In the coming weeks we will hold it up and fight for the change of strategy and redeployment of troops that is long overdue."

The president swings back with a 10 am ET speech today in Washington.

Obama may still have his own explaining to do on Iran. HuffingtonPost.com's Sam Stein finds this Obama quote from a little-noticed May interview he gave to an Israeli newspaper: "I don't think it would be appropriate for us to engage in full-scale diplomatic discussions without some progress or some indication of good faith on the part of the Iranians." (How exactly does that differ from Clinton's approach -- or, for that matter, the Bush administration's?)

Obama is also drawing blogospheric blasts for his inclusion of Gospel artist Donnie McClurkin in a South Carolina concert tour that's designed to promote his candidacy. "McClurkin, who is also a Pentecostal minister, has been a prominent advocate of the view that homosexuality is a lifestyle and that gays can will themselves to heterosexual behavior," Mike Dorning reports in the Chicago Tribune.

Daily Kos: "The Audacity of Bigotry." TalkLeft: "The singers his campaign choose for this tour represent him." PerezHilton: "Booooo!"

As of this morning, McClurkin is still in the lineup. Obama, in a statement released last night: "I have clearly stated my belief that gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters and should be provided the respect, dignity, and rights of all other citizens. . . . I strongly disagree with Reverend McClurkin's views."

Remember that I-don't-recall response Thompson had last month when he was asked about Terri Schiavo? Thompson does, and he addressed the matter in highly personal terms yesterday, talking about the details of the 2002 death of his own daughter, ABC's Jake Tapper reports. "Making this into a political football is something that I don't welcome, and this will probably be the last time I ever address it," he said. "It should be decided by the family. The federal government -- and the state government too, except for the court system -- should stay out of these matters, as far as I'm concerned."

Thompson "tried to erase the gaffes of past trips to the Sunshine State," ABC's Christine Byun reports. He addressed the Everglades drilling issue as well as Schiavo. "He also admitted that he's 'kind of laid back guy,' but that he was 'hard-working,' arguing he left two jobs to jump into the race," Byun writes. And Thompson blames the media: "These other guys have been running for two years and one of the guys spent $50 million dollars, and they're apparently not asking him why he's so low in the national polls, but they're asking me why I am only second?"